The Adventures of Dru the Ensouled
by Energybeing
Summary: Drusilla's got a soul. Angel Investigations has another seer. Wolfram & Hart aren't happy. Spin off of "Adjustment Phase".
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: this story is a spin off (much like Angel itself) from my other series, Scoobies & Stargates. The events that give Drusilla her soul are to be found in "Adjustment Phase". However, this story will probably still make sense if you haven't read the other one. Let's just say, Willow gave Dru her soul back then teleported her to LA.

Set before Charmed, and about mid-season 1 for Angel. Sometime after Angel goes to see Buffy in Pangs, but before Doyle dies.

I do not own either the Buffy or Charmed franchise, or any part of it. This will continue to be the case throughout the story, so don't sue me.

~*~

Holland Manners was in the process of firing one of his junior lawyers (although how he'd ever managed to get beyond intern was beyond him. The man simply didn't seem to grasp that they were trying to keep mass-murdering demons _out_ of prison. Apparently the lawyer still had morals) when his secretary politely knocked on the door and told him that Mr Vail was calling.

Holland sat back in his chair, staring inscrutably at the lawyer, who was fidgeting nervously. No doubt he was wondering whether Holland would fire him, but that wasn't the dilemma Holland was facing. "Take him to the Firing Room." he said to his secretary eventually. The ex-lawyer sagged hopelessly, and Holland thought to himself how amusing it would be to see his face when he saw what the Firing Room was for. At least the Fire Elementals would get a good meal from him.

No sooner had his secretary closed the door than Cyvus Vail materialized before Holland. Of course, Holland knew that Vail wasn't really there - despite being the most powerful mage Holland had ever met, not even Vail could penetrate the numerous wards stopping people from teleporting in.

The astral projection of the old, red-skinned demon cut straight to the chase. "Have you been training some new witches, Holland?" he asked in his harsh voice.

Holland thought for a moment before answering. Although Vail did work for Wolfram & Hart, he was more of a contractor than an employee - although he did have connections that went amazingly high up in the firm - so Holland didn't want to share too much with him. Anyway, the firm was always training witches, but they hadn't done anything that should alert Vail. Or they shouldn't have done, at least. He made a mental note to look into it later. "No more than usual, Cyvus. Why?" he settled for asking.

"In that case, there's some home-grown witch out there that's appallingly powerful, with just as appalling control. A while ago, someone teleported into the city - I don't know who - but the amount of magic wasted was huge. Whoever it was, get them, and train them before they accidentally blow up a state." Vail said agitatedly.

"Is it that serious?" Holland said with some alarm. Vail was powerful enough that he didn't need to fear anything much, just the odd demon that was immune to magic (Holland shuddered when he remembered the time another branch of Wolfram & Hart had tried to hire Gnarl as a magician-killer. After losing about 15 bright lawyers trying to convince the thing to work for them, they'd eventually discovered the entire block surrounding the target paralysed and in various states of skinlessness. That had been ridiculously hard to cover up, and everyone involved in the project had been sacrificed as punishment) but if this new witch was making him nervous, then she was definitely someone they wanted working for them.

"Oh, yes. I've never seen someone with that much raw power. You have to get to them. I'm not joking - with power like that, it's only a matter of time before something goes horribly wrong." Vail answered.

"Can you tell me where they teleported in? And where they came from?"

"I can tell you roughly where they entered the city. As for where they came from, not a chance. Here." said Vail, and with a brief hand gesture one of the many pieces of paper on Holland's desk morphed into a set of coordinates. He hoped it was nothing important. "When you find her, send her to me. None of your magic-users would stand a chance at training her." Vail said, before vanishing again.

Holland rang for his secretary, who almost instantly appeared at the door. Such was the incentive of not being sacrificed. "Get me Morgan and McDonald, now. And the security footage for these coordinates." he ordered, handing her the piece of paper. She nodded and dashed out.

Holland leant forward, drumming his fingers on his desk. He'd give his secretary eight minutes to bring everything here, which should be enough time. If it wasn't, well, he needed a new secretary. And Fire Elementals were always hungry.

~*~

Six and a half minutes later (Holland thought that maybe he'd been too generous with his estimate, he'd have to cut down next time) two of the best and brightest lawyers in his branch were sitting in front of his desk, and the security footage was sitting on it.

Holland quickly filled Lilah and Lindsey in on the situation. Lilah seemed content that he had told her, but Lindsey wanted to know why they'd been brought into the loop.

Holland smiled. McDonald would go far, if he didn't cross the line. "I'm going to show you the footage. Then each of you are going to head up two separate teams, tracking down the witch and convincing her to work for us." Lindsey smiled sharkishly at that. He loved any chance he could get to outshine Lilah.

He ran the footage, activating software that one of his technomages had made that would find anything magical. It didn't take long. Nor was it in anyway what he had expected.

Holland had assumed, from the way Vail had been speaking, that it was the witch herself who had teleported in. But that wasn't what he was seeing, unless something very, very odd was going on. Because he knew the woman who appeared in the flash of light, and she was no witch.

She was a vampire. Holland knew her, from Angel's files, and from old Wolfram & Hart files. Drusilla, who Angel had sired. Drusilla, who had second sight, which she had used to make piles of money under the pseudonym "Miss Edith" on the American Stock Market, eventually helping along the Depression in the '30's. Drusilla, who was now in LA. And, if Holland wasn't very much mistaken, now had a soul. He wondered when that had happened, because he could see it there, in the footage.

Lilah and Lindsey clearly recognized her from the Angel file as well. Before they had a chance to say anything, Holland said "Okay, change of plan. Lilah, you stick with finding the witch. Lindsey, you stay here. There's something I want you to do."

Lilah fought between her instinct between doing what she was told and asking how one Earth she was meant to do that. Eventually, she just had to ask "How can I do that?"

Holland sighed. Lilah was a good lawyer, skilled at eliminating those who stood in her way, but she had no initiative. "Drusilla's in LA. Angel's in LA. Find mutual acquaintances that know Angel is here." Lilah nodded, getting out.

Lindsey sat back in his chair, calmly waiting for Holland to tell him what his new assignment was. He didn't have to wait for long. "You know that Drusilla has second sight?" he said. Lindsey nodded, still waiting. "Well, now that she has a soul-" Lindsey started at that, and Holland smiled. "Didn't you notice that? Tsk tsk. Anyway, now that she has a soul, she'll probably want to join Angel and his ragtag gang of followers. And she'll be a more effective seer than the one they've got now, that only sees what the Powers let him see. And we can't have that, now, can we?

But, just because she has a soul, doesn't mean that Drusilla will be good. We're living proof of that. So we need someone evil, with a soul, to sort of... show her the way, as it were."

Lindsey thought it through. It seemed a good plan, as plans go, but he thought he could see a hole in it. "But, as you say, Drusilla has second sight. Won't she see this coming? And, if she cosies up to Angel, it's not like he's going to let any of us get near him."

Holland smiled again. Unlike Lilah, Lindsey did think for himself. "Precisely. But every seer is limited. They can't see things outside of their frame of reference. So, all we need is to bring someone in from another dimension." he said, triumphantly.

"Isn't that dangerous?" said Lindsey, thoughtfully.

"Yes. You need special blood to open the inter-dimensional portal. For obvious reasons, the Slayer's is impossible to get, and the blood of one ensouled vampire just isn't enough. But now that there's two..." Holland didn't feel the need to go on.

"You want me to go and get the blood, summon some evil thing with a soul from another dimension and convince it to turn Drusilla to our side." Lindsey stated flatly. Just lay on the impossible tasks, why don't you.

"Yes."

"Just checking."

~*~

Angel sat brooding in his office (not that he'd ever call it that. No, it was just - thinking. Alone. In the dark. For hours on end) hoping that a client would turn up. Cordelia was at one of her numerous auditions, which she never seemed to get, and Doyle had just left to - do whatever he did when he wasn't here. Angel didn't know what that was, and he felt absolutely no desire to know.

He dimly heard some voices - one of the benefits of living in an underground office is that sounds from the world above were rarely heard, even by his sensitive vampiric hearing. Which left Angel more solitude to br- think in.

However, the voices seemed to be coming nearer. Well, one voice. Doyle's. Angel thought he had only just left. He must've bumped into a client.

"What're you talkin' about? I ain't screaming. No one here is screaming. Just come along now, Angel's just through here. No, I don't mean Angelus. Who're you, anyway? How d'you know Angel?" Angel heard Doyle say to the currently inaudible visitor. He sat up, then went to turn the lights on. Anyone who knew him by Angelus was bad news, and if it got to a fight he wanted to be able to see what he was doing.

Then Angel smelt a familiar scent wafting through the rarely disturbed air. One that he'd last smelt two years ago, and which he had no desire to smell again. Too many bad memories (all the worse because they'd felt good at the time).

But the important question was, why would Drusilla be here to see him?


	2. Chapter 2

Doyle came into Angel's office, Drusilla in tow. Angel was mildly surprised to see that apparently Doyle hadn't been tortured or threatened at all. In fact, he just seemed rather annoyed.

"Hey boss. I've got a client for you. At least, I think she's a client. She's a little bit... unsettled, if you know what I mean." Doyle said, twisting a hand next to his head in the universal sign for crazy. "So, if you don't mind, I'll be off now." he said, and left. Although, if Angel knew Doyle, he'd be hiding around the corner to listen in, so he can weigh in with "Guidance".

"Hello, Daddy." Drusilla said, staring at the ceiling.

"I'm not your father, Dru." Angel said evenly "You know that."

"I know. You killed him. I heard him scream. You made me watch. I was so afraid. Then I wasn't. For a very long time. But now, I'm afraid, Daddy. Everyone's screaming, and I don't know why." Drusilla said in a quiet voice, still staring at the ceiling. Angel's eyes flicked up there to see what had gotten her attention, but there was nothing there. He looked back down and started when he saw Drusilla's eyes boring into him.

Angel wished Spike was here. Much as he hated to admit it, the younger vampire had usually been able to understand Drusilla's ravings. As Angelus, he had never had the patience. "Dru, will you try and be coherent." he said, gently. It would seem she was here for some kind of help, which was odd. He'd have thought he'd be the last person she would go to in this kind of circumstance.

"Coherence. Making sense. How can I make sense when the world is wrong? The little witch with the darkness inside changed me. Or was it the man with the scythe? I was him, and he was me, and now I'm not me anymore. Coherence. Yes, I can give coherence a go. She found me, Daddy, the little witch I nearly killed. She saved me, saved me from the monsters. She was so brutal. It was wonderful. Then she sent me here. And everyone's screaming and. They. Just. Won't. Stop." she said, breathing heavily and clutching at her ears.

Angel tried to piece it together. The little witch... Well, Angel knew only one witch, at least recently, that Drusilla had nearly killed, but he knew of no reason why Willow would save Drusilla. Or, for that matter, how the redhead had gained enough power to teleport Drusilla here in the first place. As for the man with the scythe - well, Angel had no clue about that part, or the screaming. But then, Drusilla _was_ insane.

So now Angel had to figure out what to do. He didn't want to kill the woman he had sired, not if he didn't have to, but Angel hadn't a clue what to do. And it wasn't as though he could keep a crazy vampire around. "Okay. Dru, I don't really know what you're saying. I don't know why you're here, or what you want me to do. I don't even know what I can do." he said, hoping that Drusilla might do or say something to help him know what path to take.

"It doesn't matter now." Drusilla said sadly. "He's coming. They'll be here at any moment." There was a thump outside Angel's office, and the characteristic sounds of Doyle having a vision.

A man materialized in the room in a burst of flame, dressed completely in black, even his face hidden. There wasn't even a hole for his eyes. He held an ornate dagger in one hand. Angel stood, moving to take out the man, but Drusilla was already there, seizing the man's knife arm, twisting and flicking a foot up to knock the dagger out of his hand, where it spiralled slowly in the air. Without even looking at the dagger, Drusilla shifted her grip on the assailant, moving him slightly so that the dagger, having completed its upward arc, plunged downwards into the man's neck. To Angel's surprise, the man combusted.

Drusilla shoved him aside, and Angel heard something whistle past where his throat would've been. He hit the ground, spun to see an identical assailant behind him, with an identical dagger. The man swept the dagger, feinting at Drusilla. It caught her lightly on the wrist, just hard enough to draw blood. The man disappeared in a burst of flame, and Doyle came rushing in.

"Boss! You're goin' to get attacked ... and it's goin' to end exactly like this." the Irishman said, surveying the scene. "Damnit. I might've been just a little late with that vision.

Drusilla looked at him scornfully. "You're not much cop as a seer, are you? In fact, you're not any cop. You're thief at being a seer."

Doyle, having seen that Angel was okay (or perhaps he knew he would be, from his vision) looked at Drusilla strangely. "What are you on about?"

"Don't worry about her, Doyle, she's insane. We should be worrying about whoever just attacked us - why, what he was after, who he was, that kind of thing."

Drusilla looked slightly to the left of Angel. "Why don't you ask the Red-Man yourself?" she said.

Before Angel had a chance to ask her what she meant, there was a whooshing noise and a sudden rush of heat, followed by a more flash of pain from his shoulder, then another whoosh and burst of heat. Angel sighed. "That thing just stabbed me, didn't it?"

"Well, more of a light slash." said Doyle in a conciliatory tone, while Drusilla burst out into peal after peal of hysterical laughter.

~*~

Lindsey sat waiting in Vail's mansion, idly flicking through one of the mage's many, many magical tomes as he waited for Vail to return. Which he promptly did, in a flash of fire.

Vail, entirely covered in black, stepped into a pentacle engraved on the floor, which contained his IV stand and medical supplies. It was a shame that he even he didn't have the power to use magic to completely banish the frailties that come with age. At least, not constantly. When he crossed into the pentacle, he sagged, fire radiating out from him without burning anything. He quickly and expertly attached himself to the IV drip, and took his medicines. Only then did he remove the protective black mask from his head, sighing with relief.

"Well, did you get it?" Lindsey asked impatiently.

Vail sighed, glancing at the lawyer in exasperation. "I don't think you grasp the difficulties of what I just did. It isn't every mage that can harness the power of a Fire Elemental, even for so short a time."

Lindsey sagged, and Vail smiled. "So, you didn't get it then." Lindsey said in despair. He had thought that using Vail was the most likely way he would succeed - and he would've had to use Vail's magical expertise soon anyway, so why not bring him in on the project earlier?

"I didn't say that." Vail said, wryly. He held out a hand, and an intricately gilded dagger appeared in it. But Lindsey wasn't interested in the dagger. He was interested in the blood on it.

Lindsey eagerly went to grab it, but it vanished before he had a chance to get close. "No no, don't forget. You were going to tell me what you wanted the dagger for. Weren't you?" Vail said, wagging a finger at Lindsey.

Lindsey gritted his teeth. He was going to, eventually, but not yet, not till everything was prepared. "That wasn't the deal." he snarled.

Vail cocked his head. "Wasn't it? Oh well, it is now. Tell me what you want the blood for, boy. Before your blood stains the blade too."

So Lindsey, feeling that he had no choice, rapidly explained Holland's plan to Vail, hoping that his boss wouldn't be too angry at him for telling the mage.

While Vail was listening to the plan, a smile spread across his face. Since he'd detected the witch who'd teleported into LA, he'd began to feel - not inadequate, that was too strong a word, but shaken. He was no longer sure that he was the most powerful magic user out there. But this, this plan would be a true test of his abilities. Even before Lindsey had fully revealed the plan, he'd already come up with a way to implement it.

"Well, why don't we get started then?" Vail said.

Lindsey blinked. "What, now? Don't you need time to prepare, of anything?"

Vail took pleasure in the young lawyer's shock. "No, boy. Opening a portal to another dimension is easy enough - the blood can take care of that. And a summoning spell is a simple affair. Anyway, it's a spell. I'm Cyvus Vail. I can do it." he said cockily. He didn't add that _controlling_ what he summoned was a different matter entirely, but that would be Lindsey's problem.

If this worked, Lindsey thought, then perhaps the Senior Partners would take notice and promote him. "By all means, go ahead." Lindsey didn't add that, if it went wrong, Vail would be the one to blame.

So Vail went ahead. As he said, the two individual spells were simple, although combining them and working them simultaneously certainly wasn't. Several times, Vail's strength nearly failed him, and he began to think that maybe casting the spell immediately after temporarily bonding himself with a Fire Elemental and nearly getting killed wasn't the best of ideas.

But eventually, the spell worked. Or, at the very least, something was summoned. Whether or not it was what Lindsey wanted, Vail had no idea. It was a man in a suit, tallish, dark hair, well-muscled. He didn't seem surprised to find himself in an entirely different place.

"Who might you be?" he asked, seemingly unfazed by Vail's demonic appearance. If it wasn't for the man's nonchalance, Lindsey would've thought that the spell hadn't worked. The man just seemed so _normal_. Well, Lindsey guessed they'd find out if he was the right man - or thing, he supposed - for the job soon enough.

~*~

Back in Angel's office, Angel and Doyle cleared up the mess that the brief fight had made in his office (Angel still wondering what to do with Drusilla, especially once Cordelia got back from her audition and saw the vampire, and Doyle wondering when Angel would tell him who the crazy woman was) and Drusilla sat playing with the wrist that the mysterious assailant had slashed.

Suddenly, Drusilla froze, staring at nothing. "Magic pouring into a bridge. So, so much. She can feel it. Why can she feel it, she isn't here, she's too far away. Here comes the hook, pulling up nothing. Why can't I see it? Why won't the stars show me? I'm blind, and everyone's screaming, screaming in my head. It hurts, Daddy, all their pain. I did it to them, so why do I hurt?" she said, sobbing, clutching herself as though to hold herself together.

It hit Angel then, why Drusilla was here. He couldn't believe he hadn't realised it before. "You have a soul."


	3. Chapter 3

Lindsey thought it might be for the best if he answered what was hopefully an evil demon with a soul's question about who he and Vail were before trying to find out who he/it was. "I'm Lindsey McDonald, this is Cyvus Vail. We both work for Wolfram & Hart."

The man lent forward. "Nice try. But I've met the Wolf, Ram and Hart, and they don't employ humans. Cyvus, maybe, but not you."

Lindsey was taken aback, although there was no real reason why he should be. He had always known that the Senior Partners existed in many different dimensions, but this man had to be extremely influential to have met them and survived to tell the tale.

However, Lindsey wouldn't allow anyone to denigrate him, even such an influential person. "Let me assure you, in this dimension, Wolfram & Hart make great use of humans." he explained.

The man sighed. "Ah, I'm in another dimension. That makes sense. Now, how can I get back?" the man hadn't seemed to move, and his voice wasn't appreciably different, but the question had definitely been more menacing than his previous tone.

"You have to do something for us." said Lindsey warily.

"Right. What is it? I don't do the whole three wishes thing, you'll need a djinn for that."

"No, nothing like that. But might I ask you your name first?" said Lindsey. If he knew the name, he could research him, and perhaps find something that would make it impossible to do anything else other than what Lindsey wanted him to do.

"But of course. I'm called Cole Turner." said Cole.

Lindsey's eyes narrowed. He'd been expecting a more demonic name, more akin to, say, Vail's. "And you're a demon, yes? And have a soul? Both are vital to our plan."

Suddenly, the man changed form. Instead of the handsome man in the immaculate suit, there was now a considerably bulkier red and black skinned demon, clothed in some kind of black cloth that looked like nothing that Lindsey had ever seen. "But you can call me Belthazor." Cole - Belthazor - said, voice now much deeper and more grating.

Lindsey smiled. This was perfect. He explained Holland's plan - although he passed it off as his own, much to Vail's amusement, and Lindsey also carefully didn't tell Cole_why_ they wanted Drusilla on their side rather than merely having her killed. Nor did he tell Belthazor why they had chosen him specifically to do the job.

Belthazor didn't seem to notice. He merely said "Is that all you want me to do, turn this vampire - I can't believe you still have those, we eliminated them millennia ago - to your cause, and then I can get back to my dimension?"

"That's pretty much the size and shape." Lindsey acknowledged.

Belthazor wavered, fading away like a heat mirage, and vanished. Vail let out a startled exclamation, then declared "No, it's impossible. No one can teleport in or out of my mansion!"

Lindsey smiled, amused to see Vail's discomfort. "He is from another dimension, Vail. We brought him along because the seer wouldn't be able to see him. What makes you think that your spells will have any effect on him either?"

Vail seemed somewhat mollified at that, but still muttered "Nevertheless, I will have to rework my spells to stop that from happening again." then, louder and clearly directed at Lindsey "Get you gone."

Lindsey went, keen to report his success to Holland. He wondered how Lilah was getting on with her quest to find the witch who had sent Drusilla to LA. Personally, Lindsey didn't think she'd have much success on that front. Not if he could do anything about it.

~*~

Doyle looked from Angel to the crazy woman who Angel had just declared had a soul. If Angel knew Drusilla normally didn't have a soul, which pretty much meant that she was most likely a vampire, as most demons did have souls, although their form of conscience could be vastly different.

So Doyle decided to test this hypothesis by saying "So, boss, one of your clique from the old days has shown up with a soul. What are you going to do about it?"

"Do about what?" said Cordelia from the doorway, having returned from her miserable failure of an audition. Neither Angel nor Doyle had heard her come in, and if Drusilla had she had given no sign of it. She was too busy examining the wrist that had been injured in Vail's attack.

Of course, it wasn't long before Cordelia noticed Drusilla sitting there. Cordelia knew Drusilla back from her Sunnydale days, and to say she was none too keen to see her again was an enormous understatement. Cordelia's voice climbed several octaves as she shrilly said "What's she doing here?" her finger levelled at Drusilla accusingly, who merely looked at it with interest.

"She has a soul." Angel said, purposefully not really answering her question, if only because he didn't know why Drusilla was here in the first place, or what to do with her.

Cordelia took a deep, calming breath. "Right. A soul. Right. Now, does that make her any less crazy?"

Drusilla answered before Angel could. "Less crazy? Is insanity measured in grams? Gallons? Or some kind of currency, perhaps. Crazy crowns? Am I less insane than I was? Was I insane before, or saner than you? After all, you don't see things, not things right under your nose. Does she, demon boy?" she finished, glancing at Doyle at the last part, who uncharacteristically blushed.

"I'll take that as a no, then." said Cordelia decisively. However, she still looked at Doyle curiously, and Doyle braced himself to reveal his part-demon heritage to Cordelia, but was interrupted by the sudden arrival of a suited man walking into the room, which was promptly followed by Drusilla's chair slamming against the wall as she fought to get as far away as possible from him.

"I do hope I'm not interrupting anything?" the man said, a hint of amusement colouring his voice.

Cordelia took in the well-tailored suit and immediately set aside the problem of the insane vampire cowering in the corner. This man looked wealthy enough that if they could secure him as a client, she might actually be able to draw a salary for once. "No, not at all, not at all. This is Angel Investigations, is there anything we can do for you?"

"You're not human." said Angel coldly, having smelt the demon on the man.

The man smiled. "No, not entirely. But then, neither is three quarters of your little group. I'm Cole Turner." Cole said, extending a hand to shake. He withdrew it seconds later when Angel refused to take it.

"Wait, three quarters - but I'm not a demon!" said a confused Cordelia.

"No, you're not." Cole agreed. Then he frowned. "Although you do look strikingly like a seer I know."

Realization dawned on Cordelia as she looked at an extremely apologetic Doyle. Only her desire to make some money out of Cole stopped Cordelia from having a rant at him right then and there.

Drusilla had seemingly gotten over her fear of Cole, as she got up and prodded him, hard, in the shoulder. Cole looked at her with interest, but caught her hand as she moved to do it again. "Please don't do that." he said politely.

Drusilla looked at him, full in the face, and Angel was surprised to see that she looked more lucid than he had seen her since before he, as Angelus, had tortured her until her mind broke. "Why can't I see you?" she whispered. "Why can't I see anything around you, and why have the voices stopped?"

Cole dropped her hand. "I don't know. I don't know how things work in - around here." he changed his sentence smoothly.

However, Angel had his doubts about him. The only people he had seen who were as well-dressed as Cole were evil lawyers. For all he knew, Cole could just be part of the latest batch of them.

Doyle had apparently had the same idea. "You wouldn't happen to be a lawyer, would you now?" he asked, warily.

Cole looked surprised. "Well, yes, actually. I passed the bar some time ago. Why?"

"Why, you work for Wolfram & Hart, that's why." Angel snarled.

Cole just looked even more baffled. "Does the Triad have lots of lawyers in this dimension then?"

Now it was Angel's turn to be confused. Doyle summed it up by saying "You know, I understood what all the words in that sentence meant, but I don't have clue what you are talking about. Would you mind explaining?"

Cole looked at them, calculatingly. Then he said "No, I don't think so. Not yet, at least. I need to go and find out a few things first."

Then several things happened simultaneously. Firstly, Cole vanished, secondly Doyle, for the second time that day, had a vision, and this time of an old seemingly abandoned building, thirdly, Drusilla began keening.

Meanwhile, Angel was contemplating how to break into Wolfram & Hart and find out exactly what was going on.

~*~

Cole needed answers, and without the familiar tug of the underworld to guide him, he hadn't the faintest of clues as to where he might go to get them. He didn't really understand how anything worked in this dimension he had found himself into.

So when he shimmered out of Angel's dingy basement office, Cole had no specific destination in mind. He just held in his thoughts the idea of going somewhere where he might find answers to his questions.

Cole felt better when he found himself in some kind of subterranean cavern. It reminded him of home. He walked through it, contemplating his situation.

Cole was fairly sure the Triad had nothing to do with him being here, for all that one of their many names, the Wolf, Ram, and Hart, seemed to be bandied around so frequently here. But he wasn't sure whose side he should be on. Sure, Cyvus and Lindsey had claimed to be working for the Triad, but they simply didn't have the feel (Cole knew of no other description, given that it was a sense beyond the ordinary five. Or even six) that he had come to expect from their minions.

Besides, against his better judgement and to his immense surprise, Cole found that he had taken a liking to the little group that those two had set him up to break apart.

These musings were interrupted when Cole saw the grey figure that sat hunched like a gargoyle above the cavern's exit. He knew he was in a different dimension, but he hadn't thought that things were so fundamentally different here that anyone other than the Source could walk into the presence of Dinza, Goddess of the Lost, and leave afterwards. No other that Cole knew of had the power to match hers.

Apparently they were, as Dinza said, just as she had in the legends that Cole had heard, said in a harsh tone, "Speak your questions."

But none of the legends Cole had heard had mentioned Dinza saying "I am surprised to find one of your kind in this realm. But speak, Lost One, and if you interest me I may permit you to leave this place with your life."


	4. Chapter 4

Dinza had answered all of Cole's questions. He now knew how this dimension worked, what Wolfram & Hart were doing here, what Angel's little group were trying to do. Dinza had even let him go afterwards, which, as far as he knew, was something that had never happened before except for the Source's occasional visits. She had said that his actions could result in either "many things being lost all at once, or for several important things to be lost, and then things to carry on as they are." Which Cole didn't understand but found understandably unnerving.

Cole couldn't shimmer back to his home dimension, although he tried several times. Different planes on the same dimension, sure, Cole could manage that easily enough, but shifting dimensions entirely was beyond his power. Which meant that the only way he was likely to be able to return to his own dimension would be to do what Cyvus and Lindsey wanted him to do.

Oddly, Cole found that he didn't want to go back, at least not right away. Dinza had explained to him that the rules of this dimension didn't exactly apply to him - apparently that was why he had brought here in the first place, because Drusilla-the-Seer couldn't see him - so that meant that Cole could do things that others couldn't.

Which was good, because Cole considered Wolfram & Hart's attempts to corrupt the population of the planet to be abhorrent. You just don't _do_ that. He believed that they should continue in the vein of the Wolf, Ram, and Hart that he knew, better known as the Triad, and try to eliminate all do-gooder witches and their ilk, leaving the planet unprotected and ignorant, so they can feed on it and use it for whatever the demonic rulers deemed it should be used for. Because what good was it if the population was evil? What did it _get_ them?

On the other hand, Cole didn't really want to join the do-gooders of this dimension in trying to bring down the abominable institution, if only because he was evil and proud to be so. He hadn't spent his century of life killing and torturing to see it thrown away because the entirety of evil in this dimension were focusing their efforts on something that he considered pointless.

Basically, what it came down to was that Cole still didn't know what he was going to do. He was disinclined to work for either party, but he wasn't interested in staying on the fence. No, Cole had never been a neutral demon-man, he had always come firmly down on one side or other of the numerous power struggles that the history of the Underworld was riddled with. It had gotten him in trouble more often than not, but that was all part of the fun.

So Cole thought the best option would be to go and pay a visit to each of the concerned parties and give them a chance to convince him to work for them. Because, if he had understood Dinza correctly, the magic that was prevalent in this dimension didn't work on him, so the only way that they could do anything to him would be to do it physically, and it is nigh on impossible to catch someone who can shimmer if he doesn't want to be caught.

Cole thought he'd pay a visit to that slimy lawyer, Lindsey, first.

~*~

Lindsey was in the middle of talking to a demon who had taken to killing prostitutes, and trying to force him to stop - it had been hard enough to convince the world that Jack the Ripper had been human (it had involved several witnesses being... silenced.) without it happening again now - and thinking of how he would gloat to Lilah when he saw her next when what looked like a heat mirage appeared by the door - the only door in the room - and condensed into Cole.

Cole didn't revert to his demonic appearance. He just lent close to the heavily scaled, deceptively turtle-like demon and said, in a quiet, conversational voice "Get out." The demon did, without a second thought, much to Lindsey's surprise. He hadn't thought the demon was much on the intelligence front.

Lindsey sat back in his chair and gave Cole a nonchalant look over his steepled fingers. "What can I do for you?" he said, conversationally. He wasn't about to escalate the tone of the discussion with someone who could teleport in one the most secure buildings on the planet.

Cole didn't take a chair, but settled for sitting on Lindsey's desk instead, if only because it clearly annoyed Lindsey. There was also the added bonus that he was still covering the only exit from the room, and there wasn't a desk between the two. Of course, Cole was sure that Lindsey had to have some kind of secret alarm somewhere about the place, but he would be long gone by the time the cavalry arrived.

"Tell me why I should work for you." said Cole plainly.

Lindsey was surprised. Of all the things that he might have expected Cole to say, that certainly hadn't been one of them. "I did mention that it's the only way you're going to get back home, didn't I?" he answered.

"Yes, you did, but I didn't mean that. Tell me why I should work for Wolfram & Hart. Why I should do this thing for you. Why I should do this thing for an organization whose goal is, to me, both pointless and obscene." said Cole. Normally, he wasn't much for the philosophizing - although to decide which faction to back in the Underworld did involve some, to a small degree - but to back either side seemed to Cole to be against his values. Perhaps all this talk of souls has stirred up the one that he had almost forgotten he had.

Lindsey laughed. He couldn't help it, and couldn't stop even when Cole scowled at him menacingly. It was several minutes before he could get a hold of himself. "You - _you_, an evil demon, want me, a lawyer for an evil law firm, to convince you that working with us is the right thing to do? You want me to talk to you about _ethics_?"

"Yes." said Cole. There was nothing else he felt it necessary to say.

To his great surprise, Lindsey was struck dumb. Why should Cole do this? He knew why he, Lindsey, was doing what he was doing. The wealth and power he got from his position were obvious incentives. But why should Cole do anything? All he'd get was sent back home, which, if he was even here asking this at all, obviously wasn't much of an enticement. "You want more for your work? Like what? Name your price." Lindsey said.

Cole shook his head. Lindsey didn't get it, he was too materialistic. Cole didn't want to be bribed to fight - he never had, he had gained a reputation in the Underworld as being unbribable. He only fought for factions when he believed in their ideology. Lindsey was the wrong man to talk to. He needed to talk to someone further up the food chain.

Cole shimmered, letting his magic take him where he needed to be.

~*~

Like Lindsey, Holland had been involved with a demon - a pair of them, actually - but unlike Lindsey, the pair that Holland were dealing with were important. They were emissaries of the Scourge, and the mere fact that these demon-supremacists were dealing with a human at all was a testament to the power of Wolfram & Hart.

Of course, this went way over Cole's head. He just thought the demon pair were another pair of insignificant demons, and sought to deal them in much the same manner as the one in Lindsey's office.

"No, you will be the one to leave, half-breed. Whether in pieces or by your own volition is your choice. Hurry, before I make it for you." said one, the spokesdemon to whom Holland had spent the past half an hour talking to. Holland wasn't entirely sure what the second demon was doing here, but judging by the insignia on his uniform he was a powerful member of the Scourge.

Cole didn't bother to make a return threat. He hadn't killed something for hours, and all of a sudden the need to do so grew inside of him, so Cole merely summoned an energy-ball and incinerated the offending demon on the spot. He summoned another and then said to the other demon "Now, I suggest that you get going, don't you?"

The demon looked at the ashes of its fallen comrade and said "Indeed. But don't think that this will go unpunished, half-breed. We will find you, and you will die." with that, the demon sauntered out.

Holland watched him go, and hoped that it would relay the information about the clan of Lister demons. Holland had hoped to make the Scourge into an ally of the firm, but alas that seemed unlikely now. At the very least if Wolfram & Hart needed to draw on their unique services again, they could mention this in the hope that it scored some goodwill points.

Then Holland turned his attention the interloper. He knew who he was, of course, a man of his position would be a fool not to monitor the office of a potential rival like Lindsey. The fact that he did it magically and that he could access 'footage' mentally was of no consequence.

"Tell me, Mr Turner, do you not have any problems with beings of good in your dimension?" Holland asked smoothly.

Cole wasn't impressed. He'd seen enough spying techniques - in fact, he had used his shadow as a spy often enough - not to be impressed by the speed at which Holland's worked. "Of course."

"Now, consider if they were all on your side. Consider that all the mighty Champions who slay your kind whenever and wherever they encounter them, and then consider all these Champion's aiding you instead. Can you imagine that?"

Now Cole was impressed. That seemed to strike at the core of the doubts and the disgust that he held for the primary evil institution in this dimension. But not all of them. "Then why do you make an effort to corrupt everyone? Why not concentrate your efforts specifically on those who oppose you?"

"Who knows where a Champion might spring up?" said Holland simply. He felt that he had made his point.

So did Cole, so he left.

There's a surprising amount of thinking that one can do while shimmering, given that it takes perhaps a second to arrive at one's destination. Perhaps one's cognitive functions sped up in such a case.

Cole used the time to mull over what Holland had told him. Apparently, what they were trying to do here was similar to what was happening in his home dimension, but instead of killing the opposition, they corrupted it instead.

It made sense. The enemies of today could be valuable allies tomorrow. But Cole knew that they would never integrate into demonic society, they would cause too many upsets, would never be trusted. But then, things were different here.

Nevertheless, Cole found himself hoping that Angel and his gang could come up with a good reason as to why he should work for them. He still found what Wolfram & Hart were doing distasteful, at the very least.

~*~

Angel was only mildly surprised when Cole turned up, and that was mainly because he had never seen anyone appear in quite the same way as Cole just had. Angel had expected that he would be seeing him again.

Cordelia and Doyle were out searching for the abandoned warehouse that Cordelia had seen in her vision, whilst Angel stayed in his office keeping an eye on Drusilla, who was currently staring at the ceiling with one hand over one eye and humming. Angel had long ago decided not to ask what she was doing. Anyway, it wasn't like he could do anything else while the sun was up.

"You ready to tell us who you are yet?" Angel said calmly. He was beginning to suspect that he wasn't with Wolfram & Hart, if only because he rather suspected that any of them would gladly admit to being lawyers, but also because he was pretty sure that none of them could teleport (except maybe the flaming assailant who had popped by earlier. Angel supposed it might have been sent by Wolfram & Hart) with the accustomed ease of the demon before him.

"No, not quite yet. I have a question to ask you first." said Cole.

Angel's eyes narrowed in suspicion. He noticed that Drusilla was staring at Cole with an exceptionally strange expression on her face. "Go ahead. I might not answer it though." he said.

"Why do you fight?" asked Cole, just as plainly as he had said the earlier similar question to Lindsey.

"What?" said Angel, just as surprised as Lindsey had been.

Cole elucidated. "Against overwhelming odds, against an enemy that you cannot hope to beat. Why fight? Why not join them, as they clearly want you to do?"

Angel hadn't a clue as to why Cole was asking him this question, but he never passed up a chance to sway a disillusioned Wolfram & Hart lawyer, even if he wasn't sure that Cole was one. "Do you believe in destiny?" Angel asked. Drusilla snorted for some reason, before resuming her ceiling-watch.

"Oh, yes, of course. I've met some of those that make it work." Cole answered, mildly bemused about the way this conversation was going.

Angel was just as bemused by Cole's statement - who made destiny work? - but he let it pass. "I knew a girl once, who according to prophecy was meant to die at the hands of a powerful vampire. She fought it, wanted to run away, but she realised that if she did that, then a lot more would die. So she followed the prophecy and went to her death."

Angel wasn't particularly sure where he was going with the tale of Buffy's death. He felt that he had to give more of an answer than the standard "because it's the right thing to do" that he might normally say.

Cole did understand, though. Or at least he understood it in his own way. "The result doesn't matter to you. Whether you live or die, it's not important to you, is it? It's the fight, the making a difference."

Angel thought it over. "Sure that's as good a way as putting it as any."

Cole smiled, and made his decision. Wolfram & Hart be damned.

~*~

Author's note: I wanted to come up with a believable reason as to why Cole wouldn't work for Wolfram & Hart. Given that he does have a soul and thus some ethical sense, this seemed as good a way as any. I hope it was realistic enough.

Also, for the purposes of this story, Quor'toth and Pylea and any other dimensions mention in the Buffyverse are in fact other planes of existence.


	5. Chapter 5

Doyle and Cordelia came rushing in, and Cordelia cried "Hey, Angel, we found the wa- oh." she cut herself off when she caught sight of an amused Cole. Then, doing as she always did when someone was around that she didn't want to face, Cordelia ignored him and looked at Angel and said "What's he doing here?" and, just as an added question about Drusilla, "And what's that crazy vampire _still_ doing here?"

Angel sighed, which given the fact that he didn't breathe was rather strange, and said "I don't know. I don't know why either of them are here."

"I have no other place to go." whispered Drusilla, her voice so low that only Angel's hearing was good enough to pick it up.

However, Angel didn't want to deal with that now - in fact he'd rather not have to deal with that kind of stuff ever - but he could hardly go out and find whatever the Powers That Be wanted him to find at that warehouse, not until the sun went down in an hour or so. He said as much to Doyle and Cordelia, who looked faintly disappointed and turned to leave.

Cole broke in, saying "This warehouse, you know where it is?"

Cordelia snapped at him, saying "Well, of course. We could hardly go there if we didn't know where it was, could we?"

With a concentrated effort to restrain his temper, Cole managed to let that pass. "Well, as long as you know where it is and you hold the location in your mind, I can shimmer you there."

Angel rounded on him. "Okay, three things. Firstly, who are you? Secondly, why should we trust you? Thirdly, what's a shimmer?"

Cole decided not to answer those questions in order. "Shimmering is a form of teleportation practiced by certain demons in my dimension, which I was brought from by some kind of magic done by a red-skinned demon named Cyvus Vail and a lawyer named Lindsey McDonald. They wanted me to subvert Drusilla to their cause." Normally, Cole wouldn't have surrendered nearly as much information, but seeing as how it directly affected them and he had decided that he _really_ didn't like what Wolfram & Hart were doing here, he thought there wouldn't be any harm in revealing the entire story.

"You work for Lindsey." stated Angel peremptorily.

"No, I was brought unwillingly from my own dimension by Lindsey. In this dimension, I don't work for anyone." said Cole, and he thought to himself _if they ask who I worked for in my own dimension, I'm not going to tell them. That would be too much information._

Before Angel got the chance to ask the question his lips were already framing, Drusilla said "Thank you for the effort, but I'd really rather not be evil again, if you don't mind. I haven't had a soul for very long, and I don't want to stain it black."

For some reason, those words resonated with Cole. He had a soul, too. He tried not to think about it, but he had one, and he'd killed and tortured plenty of people - enough that even the soulless demons thought him bloodthirsty - and, according to Dinza, Drusilla had done much the same in her time, as had Angel (although apparently that hadn't been Angel but Angelus, which, as both Cole and Belthazor, he could identify with).

But they had souls now. Even Drusilla, who had only had a soul for a day at most, didn't want to do anything to sully it. Cole, the murderous demon who fought for ideologies, wondered why he'd never tried to see the point of view of those that the Underworld was dedicated to wiping out before.

However, Cole gave no outward sign of an inward change, and Angel took the opportunity to say the question that Drusilla had previously interrupted. "You didn't answer my other question." he said, softly.

"I trust him." said Drusilla, unexpectedly.

Angel knew that Drusilla was insane, but she was also a Seer. It was possible that Drusilla was just rambling inanely (although it had seemed that since she'd gotten a soul she seemed just a little less mad) but it was just as possible that she might have Seen something that indicated a reason it trust Cole. So Angel settled for saying "Why, have you seen something?"

"No, not a thing. When he's around, silence follows. I can't see anything, hear anything, around him." Drusilla said, surprisingly lucid. Angel realised that she hadn't become saner since she'd gotten a soul (it would've been mildly surprising if she had, given the decades Angel had spent living of rats and moping even more than - some people wrongly said he did now) she was saner when Cole was around. Angel had never considered the effect that having the Sight might have on Drusilla. He knew that many other Seers had been driven mad by what they saw, but he had always thought that it was a result of Angelus' physical and psychological torture that Drusilla was insane.

Cordelia, though, was understandably confused. "You're saying that we should trust him because you can't predict what he's doing? I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that trusting someone unpredictable is the _wrong_ choice."

"I've got to agree with Cordy on this one." said Doyle sycophantically.

However, Doyle didn't get the response he was hoping for. Cordelia merely glared at him and said "Well, you didn't even tell me you were half-demon until your secret was already out, so you don't even get a vote!"

Doyle whined "Cordy, I _explained_ that."

Cordelia softened slightly - only slightly - and said "I know you did, but I'm still angry at you! And at you, Angel, for not telling me." she said, rounding on the offending vampire, who didn't succeed in looking innocent.

Cole coughed, interrupting the dispute. "Don't you think that we are getting away from the issue in hand somewhat?"

"No!" Cordelia snapped at him "We are still deciding whether or not we should trust you... we are just deciding who should decide if you're trustworthy."

"Right, let's put it to a vote." said Angel mildly, because he really wanted to cut Cordelia off before she went into full blown rant mode. "All in favour of allowing Cole to teleport us to the warehouse, raise their hands."

Drusilla's hand shot up, whereas Cordelia's very emphatically didn't move. However, both of their decisions were made irrelevant by a Doyle clutching at his head in the throes of a vision.

When he returned seconds later, head feeling like it had been run through a blender, Doyle said urgently "We need to get to that warehouse now!"

"Good enough for me." Cole muttered, mildly disturbed by seeing someone have a vision next to someone who looked _exactly_ like Kira the Seer. Fortunately, Angel's office was already pretty crowded by the amount of people in it, so it was easy for Cole to reach out and gain contact with everyone he wanted to shimmer.

Then they shimmered, and Cole hoped that Cordelia and Doyle were concentrating on where they wanted to shimmer to. He didn't want to accidentally shimmer to some other country entirely, or leave them stuck inside a wall.

~*~

Fortunately, Doyle and Cordelia had managed to hold their destination firmly in mind, and they teleported exactly where they had intended to go. Not that Cordelia, who was only human, and Doyle, who was still suffering from the after-effects of having a vision, enjoyed their first shimmer as they retched noisily. Even Angel felt slightly nauseated, although Drusilla let out a whoop of excitement.

"So, why are we here, exactly?" said Cole, looking around at the empty warehouse.

"Mr Visions-Give-Me-A-Headache had a vision of this place." said Drusilla disparagingly, as everyone else was too busy trying not to vomit or busy examine the building to answer.

"I go by Doyle now." said Doyle, having recovered slightly.

Angel, who had moved away from the rest of the group, suddenly bent down and tore at a piece of floor that was seemingly indistinguishable from the rest, to reveal a huddle of green, skeletal demons. There was something to be said for the solitary approach.

Doyle moved over to where the hidden trap door and called down to what he identified as Lister demons "Everyone! We've got to go!"

Before Doyle could say anything else, a voice (a young teenager, by the sound of him) called up "Why?"

"The Scourge is coming." Doyle said simply. Angel guessed by the sudden upsurge of talking amongst the demons in the pit that they knew what that was, which was good, because he certainly didn't.

So Angel took Doyle aside slightly and asked "What is the Scourge?"

"Death." said Doyle, melodramatically, but at a glare and an eye-roll from Angel (who would've thought that it was possible to do both at the same time?) he went on to say "They're demon supremacists who want to wipe out all half-breeds and humans. Kind of like the Nazis of the demon world."

Angel muttered something along the lines of "Great, Nazis. I wonder if Spike will show up?" then called over to Cole "Can you teleport them?"

Cole looked down at the mass of demons. "All of them? Don't be ridiculous. I can shimmer four, maybe five at once, but it's going to take me a long time to do this many. Where do you want me to shimmer them to?"

Angel thought for a moment, then said "There's another warehouse near the docks, the owner owes me money. From there, get them onto his ship."

"Right." said Cole, who strode over to Angel and grabbed him by the arm, then shimmered to the destination he had just described, then shimmered back. "Got it." Then Cole shimmered down into the hole and started evacuating Lister demons.

"It's not going to be fast enough, the Scourge is nearly here. Some of them are going to have to make a run for it, but unless the Scourge gets delayed, some are going to get caught, and then the information about the whereabouts of the others will be tortured from them." warned Doyle.

Angel smiled grimly. "I guess that means we'll have to come up with a delaying tactic then."

Doyle took a step back "Whoa, why are you looking at me like that? I'm not going to like this plan, am I?"

Drusilla, who had begun to have visions again now that Cole was busy shimmering back and forth, chuckled "No, you're not. But they are coming, so you don't really have a choice, do you, spiny."

Doyle grimaced and muttered "Why does she have to keep calling me names?"

~*~

Whilst Cordelia was busy helping the Listers escape through the back door, because even with Cole shimmering as many as he could (and scaring the life out of everyone when he reappeared looking like Belthazor, because this kind of high-frequency shimmering was ludicrously tiring) the Listers weren't getting out fast enough, Drusilla, Angel and Doyle (who was indeed spiny) made a run for it - out of the front door, right into the path of the marching squadron of the Scourge.

As the trio hared away, the soldiers (who, to Angel's disgust, were even wearing Nazi style uniforms) gave chase. They saw half-breeds, they chased half-breeds, and they killed half-breeds. It was as simple as that. None of them noticed the fact that it looked like Angel was chasing the other two.

Eventually, Doyle and Drusilla veered into an abandoned house, which Angel followed them into, and which the Scourge followed him into. That much went according to Angel's plan.

But Cole decided to take matters into his own hands.


	6. Chapter 6

Author's note: warning - character death.

~*~

Cole was a clever man, even if he was half-demon. He could thrive in the Underworld or on the surface equally well - he had even managed to pass the bar above ground and become a lawyer a couple of decades ago, although compared to the complexities of demonic law that had been child's play.

Belthazor wasn't clever, which was why Cole tended to remain as Cole. Oh, Belthazor was a genius in certain respects, like how to torture someone for days on end, but for things that didn't involve violence, and lots of it, Cole generally suppressed Belthazor.

Which was a shame, because Belthazor was considerably stronger, both physically and magically, to Cole. Which was why Cole had had to revert to Belthazor for the repeated shimmering of groups of Listers, because Cole just wasn't up to using that much power in so short a time.

So, when Belthazor shimmered back to the warehouse to pick up another batch of Lister demons, and found a dozen or so members of the Scourge menacing about the half that many Listers and Cordelia, he reacted the only way he knew how - with overwhelming violence.

Of course, the Scourge weren't expecting a teleporting demon, otherwise they would've borne down Belthazor by sheer weight of numbers, but the couple of seconds it took for the Scourge to get over their shock - people just didn't teleport in this dimension - was plenty of time for Belthazor to even the odds somewhat. He didn't even bother using energy balls (and the fact that he might hit an ally was only a minor concern).

It was a short, dirty fight, although only Cordelia stayed to witness it as the Listers took the opportunity to run away. Belthazor enjoyed the adrenalin surge and the echoing surge of joy he felt at killing things before Cole asserted dominance and changed. "Where did the others go?" Cole said to Cordelia, panting slightly.

"Angel took Doyle and Drusilla to try and draw away most of the Scourge so that we could escape. He had some kind of plan, but he wouldn't tell me what it was." said Cordelia, gawping a little. Angel was probably a bit stronger than Belthazor, and their technique was about equal, but Cordelia had never seen anyone fight with such sheer_ferocity_ as Belthazor had. He'd ripped through the Scourge soldiers like so much wet paper - she doubted that Angel could've taken them out so fast. Cordelia wasn't much of fighting fan, but she couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to see Buffy and Belthazor fight. That might be a match you could sell tickets to.

Cole didn't notice any of that. He just cursed in an old demonic dialect - Cordelia didn't understand the words, but cursing was cursing in any language - before morphing back into Belthazor and shimmering away.

Cordelia stood stock still for a moment, before shrugging and heading after the Lister demons. She still had to make sure that they got on the ship and away from here before the Scourge caught up to them.

~*~

Angel had hoped that he would be able to convince Drusilla to hide in the shadows, because he needed her invisible as part of his plan - Drusilla had an astonishing ability to blend into shadows, no matter how bright the clothes she was wearing was. Angel had once seen an Argus demon (a demon nearly covered in eyes) walk past Drusilla without noticing her when she was dressed in a white wedding dress she had stolen from the bride she'd just eaten - but, now that she was away from Cole, Drusilla was beginning to go crazy again, and she wouldn't do anything he said. She was just alternating between giggling and looking sorrowful.

Well, that meant that Angel had to adjust his plan slightly, and hope that if it all went pear-shaped - as things tended to do around Drusilla - she'd help fight their way out of there, because Doyle couldn't fight for toffee and Angel doubted that he could fight off a whole squadron of demons all by himself.

The first of the Scourge entered the abandoned building, and Angel and Doyle (now green and spiny) began engaging in a mock fight, as Angel's plan dictated. The Scourge, as Angel had hoped, didn't rush them but slowed down to watch, evidently amused to see half-breeds fighting each other. They also seemed mildly interested in Drusilla, who was watching the tussle and clapping and laughing enthusiastically.

Then Angel, as he and Doyle had agreed, gained the upper hand in the fake battle and reached out and snapped Doyle's neck with a resounding snap.

The soldiers of the Scourge parted, and another demon - nearly indistinguishable from the others, save for the various badges and accolades on his Nazi-style uniform, which presumably indicated a high rank - made his way through the avenue and asked imperiously "Why did you, a vampire, the lowest, most impure half-breed of all, kill the other half-breed?"

Angel prepared to answer, hoping that he could explain away the crazy vampire who was staring at the Scourge leader with fascination, but he was interrupted when the stocky form of Belthazor appeared in front of him and incinerated the demon with an energy ball, before turning, grabbing an astonished Angel and an ecstatic Drusilla and shimmering away before the horde of enraged Scourge came charging at them.

Belthazor deposited Angel and Drusilla at the warehouse that was now teeming with Lister demons, before shimmering back for the prone Doyle that Angel, as quickly as possible, explained was there.

Just after Belthazor left, Drusilla muttered "He'll be too late."

Suddenly, Angel felt sick. He _really_ hoped Drusilla didn't mean what he thought she meant. "What do you mean?" he asked, dreading the answer.

"The spiny one will die. Has died. It is written in the sky." Drusilla said simply.

Angel didn't bother to protest, to declare that Drusilla was wrong, that she had to be wrong, and that Doyle was still alive. He wouldn't know until Belthazor came back.

The minutes stretched by, and Cordelia made her way over to them. The first thing she asked was "Where's Doyle?" but the look on Angel's face was all the answer she required. She sat suddenly on the floor as though her legs had given out. She didn't say anything, because there was nothing to say. Drusilla patted her shoulder gently, but Cordelia didn't notice.

They stayed there, as the minutes dragged by, until abruptly Cole, not Belthazor, shimmered back, the head from one of the Scourge demons in one hand, the other arm being used to support an extremely bloody, but definitely alive Doyle, who Cole slowly lowered to the floor.

Cordelia rushed to hug him, but Angel put a restraining hand on her shoulder. "I wouldn't." he said. Having had more experience with wounds than Cordelia, Angel was able to tell that several of Doyle's ribs were broken, and one arm was fractured. Hugging wouldn't be a good thing.

"I'm sorry, the Scourge was already on him when I got back. I managed to fight them off, but he was like this when I got to him." Cole said. He had barely known the half-demon, and he wasn't the type to mourn - he'd lost too many comrades in various skirmishes to do that - but Cole nevertheless enthused his voice with as much sympathy as he could manage. "I think one of his ribs has punctured a lung." Cole said, indicating the blood oozing from Doyle's mouth. Everyone heard Doyle's laboured breathing. Cole went on "He's lucky to be unconscious and not dead. I doubt he'll last much longer." Cole said clinically.

"Don't you say that! Don't say that! Just don't!" Cordelia half-yelled, half-sobbed, pounding on Cole's chest, who just stood there and took it. Angel walked over to the Scourge's severed head, looked at it consideringly, the kicked it the entire length of the warehouse, narrowly avoiding a Lister's head on the other side. The demon was about to complain, before seeing the look on Angel's face and wisely deciding not to. It didn't make Angel feel any better.

Then Drusilla said, from her kneeling position by Doyle's side "Hush! Spiny's trying to say something."

Everyone was immediately by the now-conscious Doyle's side. He was saying, so quietly as to be almost inaudible "Cordelia." over and over again.

Cordelia took the dying man's hand and squeezed it tightly, and said in a voice thick with unshed tears "I'm here, Doyle, I'm here."

Doyle struggled to say something else, but his voice had now faded completely. However the word was fairly easy for Cordelia to lip read. "_Goodbye_" he mouthed.

"Don't you say that! You'll be fine, you will!" Cordelia said, crying openly now.

Cordelia might have gone on for longer, but Doyle was trying to say something else now. This, too, was fairly easy to lip read. "_I love you_"

"I know, I know you do. I might - I might - oh, fuck it, I love you too!" sobbed Cordelia, and kissed the dying man. Unnoticed by everyone, an ethereal light moved from Doyle to Cordelia at the contact.

Doyle died with a smile on his face, and the entire warehouse was silent save for Cordelia crying, as the Lister demons commemorated the man who had given his life to help save theirs.

Angel remembered the time that he had first met with Doyle, when he had convinced him to help the helpless. He wondered whether there was any way that things could've gone differently, if whether he had gone solo would Doyle still be alive.

Drusilla wished she could have Seen anything that would've saved the life of the spiny, useless Seer. If there was any way that wouldn't have led to Doyle dying today.

Cole thought about the blind rage Belthazor had gone into when he had seen the broken, bloodied form of the man in front of him. He wished that he had been faster, that he had brought back Doyle on the first trip to warehouse. That there had been something he could've done to save him.

Cordelia didn't think about anything. She couldn't get past the fact that Doyle, the man who had loved her, the man she was just beginning to love, was dead in her arms.


	7. Chapter 7

Cole and Drusilla moved a little way away from the mourning Cordelia, leaving Angel to comfort her - although Angel's form of comforting consisted largely of sitting quietly next to her, in the hope that she might draw strength from his stoic presence. Angel had never been much of an emotional person, and he was struggling to deal with his own.

"Why aren't you brown?" asked Drusilla, suddenly.

Cole looked at her, somewhat startled by the non-sequitur. "Why would I be brown?" he replied, confused.

"Well, you're black and red, but black and red make brown. So why aren't you brown? At least around the edges." asked Drusilla intently. Cole remembered that Dinza had mentioned her insanity, although he hadn't had a chance to see much of it. However, he also wondered whether this was Drusilla's coping mechanism.

Cole decided to play along. "Well, you have dark hair but pale skin. Why aren't you a sort of coffee colour?" he said.

"I suppose so. Do you think she'll stop crying over him soon? It makes me feel uncomfortable." said Drusilla, shifting from foot to foot.

"I don't know. Where I come from, dead is dead. When demons die, we don't mourn them, they're just gone." Cole answered slowly. Although he was telling the truth - he had never mourned a fallen colleague - he could understand and empathize with Drusilla being uncomfortable with the situation.

"I used to feel that too. Kind of hollow. I used to enjoy torturing people, you know? But I didn't care when they died. I think I preferred it that way." Drusilla murmured, only Cole's demonic hearing allowing him to catch it.

Cole wondered why having a soul made such a difference to Drusilla, but little, if any, difference to him. He'd had one for far longer than her, and yet he'd never felt the kind of qualms that she was expressing.

Then Drusilla reached up and kissed him. Cole hesitated for a moment, and then she broke away, avoiding looking at him. "Sorry. I - I don't know why I did that." she said. If she could still blush, she most certainly would've.

"On the whole, I don't really mind that you did. But I don't think that this is really the time." Cole said thoughtfully.

Suddenly, Cordelia got up and strode toward them, Angel trailing in her wake. She looked awful, although she had managed to stop crying. Her eyes were red, and her arms were crossed across her chest and her fingers were digging into her palms so hard that Drusilla could smell the blood. Periodically, she shivered violently.

"What are we waiting for?" Cordelia said, voice harsh from crying. "Let's get these demons on the boat. It's the least we can do for -" she broke off suddenly, but everyone knew the word she didn't say - _Doyle_.

"I'll go and find the captain." said Angel quickly, hurrying off. Perhaps, if he intimidated the captain a little, to make him go faster, Angel might feel better. And at least it would give him something to do. He _needed_ something to do.

Cordelia watched him go, minute trembles running constantly throughout her body. Then she turned to Cole, her arms wrapped so tightly around herself that it was obvious that she was literally trying to hold herself together - or to stop incapacitating grief from pouring out. "Cole, can you - can you do something about Do- about the body? One of your fire ball things? I just - just can't stand it, with him - that there." she stammered, trying to keep her voice level and biting her cheeks to stop herself from crying.

"Of course." said Cole briefly, striding towards the corpse.

It was the work of a moment to incinerate the earthly remains of Doyle, and Cordelia couldn't force herself not to watch. When he was gone, she flinched as though she had been struck, then became stock still. Obviously, she didn't know what she might do if she had to move.

At that moment, Angel returned, scowling (even more than usual). "The captain says we can't leave until his first mate has been found. Apparently he's vanished. I thought I'd go and look for him." he said brusquely.

Before Angel had a chance to turn and leave again, Cole called out "No, stay, I can find him faster than you can."

Angel stopped, although he wished he could go. But if there was another way, by what right could he leave Cordelia in this state? So he settled for asking Cole "How?"

Cole wiggled his fingers in front of him. "Magic." he said simply. Cordelia wished that she could laugh, or even smile, at that.

Before Angel had a chance to ask Cole exactly what type of magic he was going to work, Cole's shadow detached from him, passing over Drusilla who stood as still as only a vampire can stand as it washed over her, before vanishing through the open doorway.

Now all they could do was wait, while Cole's shadow found the first mate. Everyone, even (perhaps especially) the crowd of Listers, wished that they could get a move on, get out of this place.

~*~

While Cole stayed in the abandoned warehouse, part of his mind was gone, traveling with his shadow. Cole had never had much control over his shadow - he could tell it what to do, but how and when it went about doing it was out of his control. Belthazor was better at it, but Cole didn't think the situation called for that.

Still, Cole was mildly surprised when he found his shadow flitting over the rooftops to the scene of the beating that had ultimately claimed Doyle's life. He was certain that there was nothing to be found there.

It seemed as though Cole was proved right, when the shadow zoomed off in a different direction entirely.

Unfortunately, the destination that Cole's shadow ultimately ended up was in the midst of hundreds of demons of the kind that he'd like to never see again - although Belthazor most certainly would.

So Cole watched through his shadow as the leader of the Scourge, the one he had met in Holland's office, gave a speech detailing how a human had betrayed his kind and a clan of half-breeds for money. He watched as said human - doubtlessly the first mate, which was why his shadow was here - was dragged out in chains, to stand before a vast orb. He watched as the Scourge's leader proclaimed that the orb - which he called the Beacon - would be the weapon with which they finally eliminated the human and half-breed population of the planet. He watched the machine being demonstrated, and the first mate being so utterly destroyed that not even ashes remained.

Then Cole's shadow came racing back to him, but Cole was no longer really paying attention to it. He was back in the abandoned warehouse. "We have to get out of here. Now." he said, urgently.

~*~

Angel, Drusilla and Cordelia stood as Cole explained what he had just seen, via his shadow - the two vampires impassively, Cordelia's face aglow with a fierce hatred at the mention of the demons who had killed Doyle.

"No, we can't leave." said Angel, once Cole had finished.

"Don't be ridiculous, of course we can. We just have to load the Listers on the boat and get out of here." Cole protested.

To both Cole and Angel's mild surprise, it was Drusilla who answered. "No. Even if we escape with a boat load of Listers, there are still millions of demons and humans that the Scourge can kill with the Beacon in this city alone. So we have to destroy it, and kill as many Scourge as we can in the hope that none of the other branches out there can build another, and that we kill the ones that built this one."

Angel further expanded on Drusilla's statement by talking about the plan he had just come up with. "So, we get the Listers on the boat, and it's an enclosed space so the Scourge won't be able to use their numbers to overwhelm us. We just have to hope that they come after us instead of going and using the Beacon elsewhere."

Cole coughed delicately. "That's not going to be a problem. I pissed their leader off at Wolfram & Hart earlier today, and once they see what I did to the ones who killed Doyle, they'll come after us." he said matter-of-factly. "But there's still only four of us. Even in an enclosed space, there would still be too many Scourge soldiers for so few to fight."

"We will fight too." said a young Lister from nearby. "You would die for us - one of you has already died for us. The least we can do is fight against those that would kill us."

"Do you speak for all?" asked Angel sceptically.

"**YES!**" came the answering roar from hundreds of throats. Cordelia smiled then, somewhat savagely, tears rolling unheeded down her face.

Drusilla turned to Cole. "Go." she said, simply.

"Go where?" Cole questioned, bemused.

"It doesn't matter. I need to See, and I can't whilst you are here. So go." Drusilla paused for a moment, then said quietly "But come back. I miss being sane."

Cole smiled at her, then turned to organize the move from warehouse to ship, aided by Angel. Drusilla squatted where she was, trying to cling to sanity so that she could coherently tell the others about what she Saw. Cordelia didn't feel in a fit state to help - she wouldn't know how to anyway - so she wandered away, out of the warehouse and further down the docks, where she looked out over the water, wind ruffling her hair.

~*~

Drusilla Saw. She Saw...

The Scourge were coming, like ants, towing the vast orb of their queen behind them. They were close, but they wouldn't get here until the trap was ready to be sprung. But too early, still, too early...

Drusilla Saw her own death.

The Angel-Beast was coming. He wanted to know what Drusilla Saw. Well, she wouldn't tell him what he didn't need to know. She told him they were coming, that he should hurry, that there wasn't long left. He left, satisfied.

Then Drusilla lost the thread of the present, tumbling into the future. It didn't concern her. She'd never see it. She just sat there and listened to the song of the stars. So beautiful. So very beautiful. And so sad...

~*~

It didn't take long for Angel and Cole to move the Listers the short distance into the hold of the ship, and it would've taken less time had they not stopped to collect anything and everything that they might be able to use as a weapon against the Scourge.

Then Angel went to get Cordelia, and Cole went to get Drusilla. Each thought that they had the best chance of convincing the respective slightly crazed lady to get on the ship.

Angel found Cordelia staring out to sea. She seemed calmer than she had before, as though she'd lost the anger and hatred that had kept her going until now, and replaced it with calm. Angel wasn't entirely sure that it was an improvement.

"Shall we go?" Angel said to her softly.

Cordelia looked out over the moonlit water, then sighed. "I suppose that we should."

They turned and left, and if an observer had been there to watch them, it would've seen them walking perhaps unnecessarily close together.

Cole found Drusilla rocking on her heels, hands pressed against either side of her face as though to reassure herself that it was still there. He crouched down in front of her and gently said "Are you alright?"

Slowly, Drusilla moved her hands away from her face. "I am. Now." she said, exaggerating every word. "Thank you."

"It's nothing." Cole said, standing. He extended a hand to Drusilla to help her up, although he knew that she didn't need it. She took it nonetheless.

"No, it is. Thank you. Really. I don't know whether I could do that again." Drusilla said truthfully.

"Well, you won't have to." Cole said, looking at her.

"No, that's true." Drusilla said, but the way she said it made Cole certain that she meant it in a different way from the way he meant it.

Cole realised that Drusilla hadn't yet released his hand, so he tried to remove it himself, but she wouldn't let go. Then, again, she kissed him, more passionately than before. Again, Cole broke it off. "It's still not the time."

"No. But there is no time but now." she murmured to herself. Cole wasn't sure that he had been meant to her it, and he was even less sure as to what she meant by it.

~*~

Author's note: given that none of the characters reacted this extremely to Doyle's death in the series, you might say that they're overreacting a little. However, I'd say they aren't, if only because there is a world of difference between watching Doyle getting killed by the Beacon and having him die in your arms.

Also, while Drusilla is less crazy when Cole is nearby, she isn't completely sane. Which may explain why she keeps kissing Cole.


	8. Chapter 8

There were two entrances to the ship that the Listers could defend, and they lined both these corridors and were prepared to take as many soldiers of the Scourge down with them as they could. Given that the Scourge were bulkier than the skeletal Listers, this meant that at least two Listers could fight every one Scourge that came rough the narrow corridor, giving them a massive advantage. However, the fact that they were untrained and the Scourge were probably veterans of countless slaughters somewhat nullified that.

Unfortunately, there was another access point to the ship that the Listers couldn't defend, because they wouldn't stand a chance in a fight in an open area. The top of the ship could be opened to gain entry to the ship's hold, so that the cargo could be loaded or unloaded by crane. Given the size of the Beacon that Cole's shadow had seen, he knew that the only way that the Scourge could get the Beacon near enough to the Listers to be sure they would kill them would be to lower the Beacon into the hold. That was why Cole, Drusilla, Angel and Cordelia were waiting up there for the chance to sabotage the Beacon. If and when they succeeded, Cole would shimmer them down and hopefully put the Scourge, demoralised by the loss of their greatest weapon, to rout. Then the captain would take the Listers far, far, away from here.

It seemed like a good plan.

~*~

The Scourge came marching through the docks, just as Drusilla had envisaged it, a rolling, implacable tide of ants. Those who were guarding the Beacon were nowhere to be seen, yet.

Incredibly, the Listers didn't lose hope at the sight of such overwhelming opposition. Perhaps they didn't have any hope to lose, and now they were fighting because there was nothing else they could do.

The Scourge began losing their soldiers when they neared the ship. Listers, those too young or too old to fight the Scourge directly, were dropping everything they could get their hands on - bricks, chairs, plates, tables - to slow the oncoming tide. Even the hardened skull of a demon couldn't stand a brick falling on it from several feet above, and even those who didn't die from the impact but were merely knocked out soon died as those that followed trampled them unmercifully into the ground.

A wild cry leapt from one of the throats of the younger Listers, in the old demonic dialect that was the language of their race. Few but the oldest spoke it anymore, although everyone knew it. "Ka-kos, Ka-kos, Ka-kos!" he cried. Soon, others took it up, then yet more, until all the Listers were calling it triumphantly at the oncoming army. Was it just them, or did the Scourge falter slightly when they heard it? "**Ka-kos, Ka-kos, Ka-kos!**" they chanted rhythmically, over and over again.

"What are they saying?" asked Cordelia mildly. She had been standing on the very edge of the ship - she would've stood on the other side of the protective railing, with nothing protecting her from the drop, had Angel not prevented her. Although Drusilla hadn't seen anything about Cordelia in her visions, she got the feeling that the girl was fey, that she'd go berserk when the Scourge came close to her. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps it would help her find some closure.

Cole had been rather surprised when the battle-cry went up - not because of what it said, but the fact that he understood it. It was a slight variation on the language of one of the demons in his own dimension, which was odd given that the Listers looked and acted nothing like the aggressive Horthalp demons whose language it was. "Out, Out, Out!" he said, in answer to Cordelia's question.

The battle-cry quietened somewhat when the Scourge met the front line of the Listers, although those who were still dropping things from windows kept it up. The Scourge, whether they were angry at the losses that they had already suffered or whether they were fighting with their customary brutality tore through the first Listers they found, their greater numbers at the opening of the entrance meaning that those who had defended it didn't stand a chance. However, having planned for that, those behind them lanced out with crude, make-shift spears, consisting of knives lashed to the end of sticks. They sought throats, and found them. The normally pacifistic Listers were surprised at the surge of savage joy they felt as their long hated and feared foe died by their hand.

Then the battle began in earnest, the Scourge forcing their way through the narrow corridors, the Listers making them pay for every step they took. Angel felt sure that the captain would be wanting to get a new ship after this, all that blood wouldn't wash out and would be impossible to explain. Well, the captain did owe him a lot of money, so Angel thought this was the least the captain could do to repay it.

When the Listers were fully engaged in the fight, too occupied now to sing their battle-cry, two vampires with excellent night vision and a half-demon whose night vision was only slightly worse saw an oncoming crane, something dark and round dangling like a Christmas bauble from it. The Beacon was on its way, and soon they would destroy it, and the victory would be theirs.

Then the Beacon began to light up, slowly, like the rising sun, illuminating the platform and the small squadron of elite Scourge soldiers guarding it.

"That wasn't supposed to happen!" Angel breathed. None of them could get close to the device if it was activated, it would be impossible to destroy. Unless, that is, one of them was willing to sacrifice themselves for its destruction.

Drusilla smiled bitterly.

"Can you shimmer over there and turn it off?" asked Cordelia blankly, as though both the question and the answer were irrelevant. Angel wondered if she had gone into shock. As painful as it had been to see, he was sure that the grieving Cordelia had been healthier, psychologically speaking, than this indifferent, uncaring Cordelia.

The crane came closer, and the ship's hold slid open - the Scourge must've found some way to do that remotely - and then a squadron dropped lightly from the platform that was now swinging above their heads, no doubt to make some kind of preparations for the Beacon's activation. Cordelia gripped the sword that Cole had gotten from Angel's office, preparing to charge the murdering scum that killed Doyle, but Angel put a hand on her shoulder. Cordelia had spent enough time around Buffy to know that, as gentle as a grip like that might seem, it could easily change in a moment to one which she wouldn't be able to escape from. She subsided.

The four of them looked out at what the squadron was doing, and couldn't quite believe their eyes. The Scourge had split into four groups, and each were pulling parts from their back packs and fitting them together to make four bridges, each spaced equidistantly apart, for easy access to the platform on which the faintly humming, glowing Beacon. They saw that the Beacon was fixed up to some kind of generator, and that all they would have to do, quite literally, would be to unplug it.

Drusilla wondered if the Scourge had stolen the technology from someone. It seemed unlikely that a race famed for their rabid speciesism would have the capability of creating such a device as the one before them, even if it was so clumsily made that all it would take to stop it would be to pull the plug. But that left the question "_Who made it?_".

Once the squadron had extended the bridges to the platform, they seemed content to wait. Apparently the Beacon took some time to warm up, as it were, and when Cole had seen it through his shadow, it had already been warmed up. So, they only had a matter of time before the device activated and they died anyway.

Although no signal passed in the group, each of the four split up to tackle one of the four groups.

Cole shimmered into the midst of one, emerging as Belthazor, a dazzling energy ball in each hand. That group lasted for only a few seconds, for all that Belthazor tried to spin the fight out. He just got carried away.

Drusilla stalked her group, cat-like, emerging from the shadows to cut their throats before sneaking away again. At first, her group were too surprised from the light show that Belthazor was making to notice their own members dropping silently. By the time they did, it was too late.

Angel had had the best part of two centuries to perfect his swordsmanship, and these demons were hardly up to his standard. After all, he had stood up to a Slayer easily enough. He mowed through the demons as though they were grass.

Normally, Cordelia would have had the most trouble in a situation like this, but Drusilla had been right. She fought with a careless abandon, slashing rapidly as she laughed, not even trying to defend herself. The Scourge soldiers were so busy trying to defend themselves against her wild attacks that they didn't have a chance to attack her themselves, and one by one they dropped when they were too slow to parry Cordelia's assaults.

Although Belthazor was the first to kill his group, it took him some time to quash his blood lust enough for Cole to take control again, which meant that Angel, in his normal, I'm-the-ex-evil-vampire-who-has-to-atone-for-my-evil-deeds way, was blithely heading across to the now-unguarded Beacon, ready to sacrifice his life to turn it off. When Cole saw that, he promptly shimmered over to Angel and shimmered him away again, and the pair began to argue who it should be to give their life to save the Listers. Several times in the argument Cole wondered what it was that was leading him to seriously consider suicide, but he dismissed it every time. He was a man of action.

Meanwhile, whilst the men argued, Cordelia was heading, unnoticed, towards the platform. She wasn't really thinking about what she was doing - she had stopped thinking shortly after Doyle died, it was too painful - but nevertheless, she knew that this was something that she had to do.

If Drusilla hadn't seen that Cordelia would do exactly what she was doing now in her vision, she would've been too far away from her to stop her from turning off the Beacon and dying. As it was, as soon as she had finished killing the Scourge, she had gone over to the grieving woman, and grabbed her by the arms and easily lifted her and carried her away from the platform. Cordelia didn't struggle - for all that Drusilla looked like a consumptive on the verge of wasting away, she was still a master vampire and considerably stronger than Cordelia was - and besides, she didn't see the point. It was over.

Then Drusilla herself headed towards the platform, where she would turn off the Beacon and save everyone. Her last act, and her only good one. It was strange - if Drusilla hadn't Seen her own death then she wouldn't be doing what she was doing, Angel would've gone instead, blithely going to die, safe in the assurance that he knew that he was right in doing so.

Halfway across the bridge, Drusilla began to feel a prickling, burning sensation. She wished that she had thought to bring one of the Scourge's corpses with her, perhaps it would shield her somewhat from the Beacon's effects. But then, she hadn't Seen herself doing that, so she knew she wouldn't.

By the time Angel and Cole noticed what Drusilla was doing, it was too late. She had already pulled the plug.

Drusilla turned to face them, smiling beatifically even as she began to disintegrate.

Cole, heedless of his own safety, uncaring as to whether there was some remnant of the destructive energy of the Beacon still around, shimmered over to Drusilla, catching her in his arms as she collapsed bonelessly then shimmered away again.

Neither of them came back. Angel moved over to Cordelia, who was staring, wide-eyed and unblinking, at the space where Drusilla and Cole had stood moments before. Angel didn't know whether Cordelia had taken it in, and, right now, he didn't care. He enveloped Cordelia in a hug, burying his face in her hair. He didn't notice that she clung to him, sobbing into his shoulder. For all that Angel had protested it, Drusilla had been like a daughter to him - a dysfunctional father-daughter relationship, to be sure, but a daughter nevertheless. And now she was gone.

~*~

Holland started violently when Cole appeared in his office. The man looked as though he had suffered a bad case of sunburn, but that was as nothing to what he carried in his arms.

Drusilla was somewhat more than horribly burnt. The left side of her face - the side that had been nearest the Beacon - was a skull, tattered shreds of flesh clinging to it here and there. Her eye was ruined. In comparison, the other side appeared as though it was unblemished, even though it was heavily burned. She was missing three fingers from the blackened claw that was her left hand. At that point, Holland stopped looking. He couldn't help but be glad that Drusilla was unconscious.

"Save her." Cole grated, harshly. "You wanted her? Save her."

Holland knew that Wolfram & Hart had some of the best medi-demons in the world, but he had no idea whether they were good enough to save her. However, judging by the look on Cole's face, that was exactly what the half-demon didn't want to hear. "We'll do our best." he said in a mollifying tone.

"I don't care for your best. Save her, or you'll die, and all your lawyers will die, and every branch of your firm will die." Cole said harshly.

Holland strongly regretted his decision to get Lindsey to summon Cole. There were a lot of people out there who would be glad to see Wolfram & Hart be destroyed, but the law firm's defences were such that it was impossible to launch an attack against one of their offices. But with someone who could cut through those defences like they weren't even there...

Holland called the best medical warlock in the world, and ordered him to get here as soon as demonically possible.


	9. Chapter 9

Unlike the majority of people skilled with healing magic, Sean Moran was human. Normally, humans had to struggle for hours to heal a cut, and most wounds were entirely beyond them. Conversely, demons generally had more skill with healing magic, especially those that belonged to species that had a naturally accelerated healing factor anyway.

However, Sean's magic was entirely based around healing, whereas most humans had more range in their talents, even if they did specialise. But Sean was the most talented healer on the planet. Give him physical contact, a little time and a little effort, and he could heal everything shy of death.

But Drusilla should have been dead. If she was anything other than a vampire - not even the hardiest of half-breed demons could've stood up to the peculiar energy of the Beacon, but as Drusilla hadn't been decapitated or staked, she still clung to life. Or unlife - then she would've been dead.

This was precisely the kind of job that Sean had prayed he would never have. He feared that not only would the scary burnt-faced man kill him if he failed to save Drusilla, but that Holland would kill him even if he succeeded, merely to keep him silent.

Not that Sean had a choice in the matter. Wolfram & Hart owned him, quite literally. They had done for years.

Because Sean, despite being a healer, wasn't a nice person. Sure, he could heal nearly everything, but it was just as easy for him to make people's bodies heal slightly wrongly. Wolfram & Hart had caught up to Sean after he had murdered six people by giving them a rapidly growing, fatal cancer. They'd offered him a job. And they'd told him what would happen if he refused. Sean had accepted.

Wolfram & Hart used Sean more as an assassin than a healer.

But there was nothing that Sean could do about that, so he got on with his task of healing Drusilla.

~*~

Drusilla was familiar with pain, both physical and psychic. Angelus had tortured her when she was human, and tortured her family before her eyes, and forced her to watch. He hadn't really stopped even after he had sired her. And the things that her Sight, her _gift_ had shown her had tortured her long before that.

But the pain that Drusilla had felt then was as nothing compared to what she felt now. She felt like she was being torn apart, burnt to death, every atom being systematically destroyed in the most painful way imaginable. And, even as her body was in excruciating agony, Drusilla's mind was being tortured just as much. She felt as though everything that made Drusilla herself was being ripped out of her.

The Beacon was truly a weapon of torture.

But Drusilla, who was psychic, clairvoyant and insane, only ever had a loose attachment between her kind and her body. It was surprisingly easy for her to set her mind free of the constraints of her body, free from the evil effects of the Beacon.

The first thing that Drusilla noticed was the cessation of pain, a lack of sensation so strong that it became one, so blissful that if Drusilla had had a mouth, she would've groaned in ecstasy.

The next thing that Drusilla noticed was the stars. It didn't occur to her that her body still lay on a table inside a building, and that she couldn't possibly actually be seeing stars. Drusilla often saw stars in the strangest of places.

Drusilla had always been fascinated by the stars, even when she had still been human. She wondered what her life would've been like if she hadn't been - certainly Darla would never have seen her out for a walk beneath the night sky.

But Drusilla had never seen stars like she was seeing them now. She could see more than she had ever seen, even on the clearest of nights, but each of them were as bright as she remembered the sun to be, a flaming ball of gas that lit up the sky. Drusilla felt that she should've been blinded, burnt to ashes by the light.

But she wasn't. Even as Drusilla saw the stars in this new way, she simultaneously saw them as tiny pinpricks in the incomparably dark sky, so dark that it seemed as though each star was in imminent danger of being swallowed up by it. Drusilla felt that she should've been blinded, swallowed up by the darkness.

Although Drusilla didn't know it, she was unusual for a vampire. Perhaps it was her insanity, or her Sight, or some other factor.

Because, whilst Drusilla would just as happily kill and eat a child as the next vampire, she would also quite cheerfully stop another vampire from killing a child and walk it home.

There was a being that could use a mind like that. Of course, unlike other, similar beings, it wouldn't take Drusilla by force. Besides, that would ruin her.

Drusilla felt a purpose wash over her. It was strange, because she had never really had a purpose before. She'd always moved aimlessly through her unlife, moving from town to town wherever Spike or Angelus had wanted to go.

She found she rather enjoyed it. Drusilla accepted the purpose, took it as her own.

_Balance is all._

~*~

In the midst of what had been a completely ordinary healing - it had even gone better than expected - Sean became aware of a change.

Normally, Sean provided energy and gently coaxed the person's body to use it to heal the way he wanted it to. This time, however, his magic was being brutally ripped out of him, being forced into the body of the vampire before him.

And the worst part was that Sean couldn't even bring himself to muster the willpower to stop it from happening.

Suddenly, as abruptly as it began, it ended. At the exact same moment that Drusilla opened her eyes.

Or eye. The one that had been damaged by the Beacon hadn't reformed, nor had the fingers she had lost or the flesh of half Drusilla's face.

In their place was an odd, translucent grey image of flesh. Sean could see right through it to the skull beneath, right through Drusilla's fingers to table on which she sat.

Drusilla looked at her hand thoughtfully, then tapped it on the table. Her new, grey fingers passed through it as though it wasn't even there - or as though they weren't even there. Then she focused, and her fingers solidified, changing colour to a paler, more fleshy tone, in keeping with the rest of her skin. Sean could no longer see through them, nor through the now-perfect skin on her face. Drusilla smiled in satisfaction.

Then Drusilla looked at Sean, and he wished that he had taken that brief opportunity to run as far from her as he possibly could. What Sean saw in Drusilla's eyes scared him more than anything he had ever seen - and he had worked at Wolfram & Hart for years.

Then Sean promptly forgot all that. He forgot everything but her eyes.

Drusilla smiled again. Sean would wake up in a few minutes, and would forget that she was ever here. She had also made sure that he would now feel qualms for work that had previously given him none. Perhaps enough to make him stop working for Wolfram & Hart. Perhaps not, also.

_Balance is all_.

Drusilla walked to the door, tried the handle. Locked. She looked down at her newly-reformed hand and focused briefly. The fingers that she had lost from the Beacon once again became that curious, opalescent grey, before reforming into a new shape. That of a key.

Then Drusilla thought better of it, and her fingers became fingers again. She had another way out.

Drusilla felt great satisfaction in kicking the door in, but that was nothing compared to seeing Cole - even a hunched, despondent, burnt Cole, sitting on the edge of his chair in the corridor outside.

Cole jumped when the door smashed to splinters, but when he saw Drusilla standing in the doorway he was in front of her so fast that Drusilla wasn't sure whether he had shimmered there or not.

Cole's face was expressionless, emotionless, as he said "You're alive." It didn't matter, his tone of voice said everything that his face didn't.

Drusilla considered the question thoughtfully. It was the wrong statement, she thought. She answered it anyway. "Yes. Yes, I am. More than you know."

Then Cole swept her up in his arms, burying his face in her hair. If she had been human, Drusilla might have cracked some ribs from the tightness of his embrace. "Don't do that again." he said fiercely.

"I won't." said Drusilla. It was true. She wouldn't.

Cole took a brief step back, then seemed to change his mind. He brought his head down and kissed her, lightly, then more strongly. Drusilla kissed him back.

They had time now.

They broke off. "What do we do now?" murmured Cole, thinking of the promise that he had made to Holland, that Wolfram & Hart could have Drusilla if only they would heal her.

"There's somewhere we have to be." said Drusilla. There was. She'd had a vision - several visions - and she knew exactly where they had to be.

Cole didn't answer, he just shimmered away, letting Drusilla guide them to their destination.

~*~

Pylean soldiers very rarely bothered to go into the woods near the mountains. There wasn't any game that was worth a hunt in there, and the farms that ran on the labour of cows produced more food than would ever be found growing wild in there.

That was why Fred had found it to be an ideal hiding place.

However, unbeknownst to Fred, the Covenant of Trombli forced soldiers to patrol in there every few years, especially those who had displeased them in some fashion.

One of them had stumbled across Fred, and it had only been because she had been quicker to recover from the shock that she had managed to pick up a rock and smash the soldier over the head with it. Fred had been rather surprised as to how easy it was. And of course, now she had a crossbow, all the better to hunt game with.

Of course, when the soldier didn't return, the rest of his squadron were obliged to go in and find out what had happened. They suspected a rebel group of cows had been behind it.

Fred never saw any of these soldiers, and the soldiers never saw what happened to them. Some of them were incinerated, and some of them had their throats cut.

So, when the Covenant ordered another squadron to find out what had happened to the first, they found the bodies of roughly half the squadron hung upside-down, their throats slit. After that, no soldiers went into the woods by the mountains, for fear of angering the mighty, evil spirit that lived there.

Fred knew none of that. She didn't know how it was that she managed to escape detection by Pylean soldiers until Angel and his gang came to rescue her years later.

Drusilla and Cole did know, but they couldn't rest on their laurels. They had things to do.

_Balance is all._

~*~

Author's note: okay, we've come to the end of this particular story now, I hope you've enjoyed it. I'm well aware that some people might not have a clue as to what is going on in this chapter, but that's alright, it will all be made clear sooner or later.


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